TSB meltdown...

[Zigenare]

Seeing as so many people on here are experts and know exactly what to do in this situation, then this is for them: https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/633114556/

Head of Infrastructure

Company Name TSB Bank · Company Location London, GB



This job is no longer accepting applications

[original PM]

I imagine that's because everyone should have put their CV forward on the basis that they could not be any fookin worse.

[Cirrus]

Quite Bewildering

Bang - straight into PC claptrap. The first two paragraphs are about diversity and inclusion (for normal people: diversity is just not good enough nowadays. You have to double up the bullsh!t with inclusion; a bit like vegetarianism isn't trendy enough - you have to be vegan. How can you have diversity without inclusion? - well, good point).

The challenge of infrastructure at a major bank in transition is complex, sophisticated and multi-faceted. None of that comes across. It's mindless HR mantra stuff.

It's not surprising this disaster occurred.

(And, since you ask, I still can't get into either my personal or business accounts )

[original PM]

Bang - straight into PC claptrap. The first two paragraphs are about diversity and inclusion (for normal people: diversity is just not good enough nowadays. You have to double up the bullsh!t with inclusion; a bit like vegetarianism isn't trendy enough - you have to be vegan. How can you have diversity without inclusion? - well, good point).

The challenge of infrastructure at a major bank in transition is complex, sophisticated and multi-faceted. None of that comes across. It's mindless HR mantra stuff.

It's not surprising this disaster occurred.

(And, since you ask, I still can't get into either my personal or business accounts )

Well hit this guy up then

https://www.linkedin.com/in/damon-yates-1421b43/

[Cirrus]

Just seen this

So-called middleware put in by Sabis is at the root of the woes inflicted on millions of customers.

TSB is heading for legal showdown with Sabadell* | This is Money

Sabis is Sabadell's IT outfit.

[Win]

Just seen this



TSB is heading for legal showdown with Sabadell* | This is Money

Sabis is Sabadell's IT outfit.

Images have since emerged of developers in Spain drinking cava to toast the data transfers."

This is the root cause ! they need to be able to afford better stuff.

[northernladyuk]

Images have since emerged of developers in Spain drinking cava to toast the data transfers."

This is the root cause ! they need to be able to afford better stuff.

Decent cava doesn't seem to make it to the UK.

[xoggoth]

Glad I do a regular download of my bank accounts. Wouldn't want a balance of 36p showing after a similar crash and no proof it was wrong.

[PerfectStorm]

Rushed testing, poor communication played role in British TSB outage - contractors

The needful: not done.

[westtester]

Rushed testing, poor communication played role in British TSB outage - contractors

The needful: not done.

Project was doomed from the start. Most of the tests were written in Spain by Sabis, many in Spanglish and some were just requirements pasted into excel sheets and passed off as test cases. Majority of the testers were long-suffering branch staff pressed into service with the promise of boozy nights away on company expenses, plus a slew of contract testers from KPMG. Incentives included test team of the week ( £25 Sainsbury's voucher) and test case prize draw (£5). Souvenir pencils emblazoned with the slogan 'Be a test ninja' were considerably less well received.

Project was Agile in name only, waterfall wedged into sprints. Daily progress meetings demanded x number of tests to be executed every day regardless of availability of functionality. Planning went out of the window as testing was focused on whatever happened to be working that day.

Quality of code from Sabis was dreadful, defects long thought fixed would reappear unexpectedly causing days of delays as it killed important processes stone dead. Documentation was lacking and there were far too few business experts and analysts to cope with demand. An in house test case management system built on a single licence HP ALM database was flaky too. Cheap though I guess.

Senior management would visit on occasion and be shown happy-path demos whilst whingers were shooed away. Contractors seeing the coming storm began to quit before TSB panicked and ordered KPMG to up the notice period from one week to four mid contract.

We all used to joke that there was no way this would be ready in 2019 let alone April, but somehow a decision was made to go ahead anyway. Never though things would go quite so badly. Scouring Twitter, you can see screenshots of numerous Java exceptions, references to an open source Netflix load balancer and all manner of bizzare messages which never showed up during testing. It'll take months to sort out I reckon, how IBM are going to unpick it I can't imagine.